


Rite of Passage

by imagined_melody



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Kid Fic, M/M, Teenagers, mention of periods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 20:48:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1563536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imagined_melody/pseuds/imagined_melody
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ian and Mickey's daughter undergoes a female rite of passage. Both her fathers quietly freak out. Both are better at dealing than they realize. (Written for the Shameless "Fic A Day in May" challenge.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rite of Passage

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the second in my badly-titled Ian/Mickey stories for "Fic a Day in May"! Now might be a good time to mention that most of the fics I write for this challenge will be completely unbeta-ed. Seriously, by the time I finished this it was after midnight and I didn't really want to look at it anymore. So if you notice any serious mistakes, feel free to let me know. Otherwise I'll go back and surface-edit in the morning. :)

_Mae got her fucking pd today_

Ian had to stare at the text for about 30 full seconds before he finally figured out what it meant. Then he swore quietly under his breath and texted back.

_Fuck._

Mickey responded almost immediately. _Yeah no kidding right_

The texting was a strategy they’d instituted when Yevgeny and Maeve were young, shortly after they’d adopted the little girl. If they weren’t within audible talking distance of one another, they would text rather than shouting across the house. It wasn’t so much that either of them cared about noise in general—but once there were two little kids around, suddenly it seemed a lot more important to get them not to scream whenever possible. God knows they did that enough already.

It felt like yesterday that they’d brought their daughter home—just a few weeks old, rosy-cheeked and remarkably even-tempered and all theirs. The name had been a compromise; Ian wanted an Irish name for her, in keeping with his family’s heritage, and Mickey had a secret affection for his own family’s tradition (at least in the younger kids) of having the first and last name start with the same letter. After a long discussion, Maeve Lilyan Milkovich-Gallagher was their choice.

Only now was it hitting home just how long ago that had been. Yevgeny was nearly 18 now, taller than his father—which he and Ian both made fun of Mickey for mercilessly—and a force to be reckoned with in every possible way. Maeve had just turned twelve a month ago. She was smart, too much like Fiona in a lot of ways, but also uniquely her own woman.

 _Fuck_ , he thought again. She really _was_ a woman now.

Sighing, he put the finishing touches on the new towel rack he was installing in the upstairs bathroom; the old one had broken weeks ago, during a friendly tussle between Ian and Mickey over who got first bathroom rights that backfired on them. He could hear the front door open and shut downstairs, followed by a cacophony of loud voices—Yevgeny, he deduced, plus Kev and V’s twins. The three of them had been in the same class at school since they were small, and getting into trouble together for about as long. 

But Mickey was downstairs, and he could deal with whatever they were up to. Ian padded barefoot across the upstairs hallway, to the slightly-open door of his daughter’s bedroom. Maeve was sprawled across her bed, engrossed in whatever was on her phone, but she looked up when he peeked in. “Hey, dad,” she said absently.

“Hey, Mae,” Ian said with a smile. “Your papa tells me you had kind of a surprise today.”

Maeve rolled her eyes. Her phone buzzed with an incoming text, and she began to type a message back. “Yeah, he kind of freaked out more than I did, I think.”

Ian snorted a laugh. “Probably.” He came to sit on the bed, wrapping his fingers around her foot and tweaking it back and forth gently, the way he used to do when she was a kid. “You doing OK? Need anything?”

“Nah, I’m good. Papa took me to the store after school to buy pads. I thought he was gonna shoot someone if they looked at him the wrong way.”

Ian shook his head, fondly. “Got any cramps? I think we might have some Advil in the medicine cabinet if you search really hard.”

Again, Maeve shook her head. “Took two a couple hours ago. Papa told me to drink lots of water, anytime the cramps feel like they’re getting worse. So I mostly just need to pee a lot.”

“OK, well if you need something, let us know.” Mae nodded, attention already back on her phone the second he stood up, and he paused for a moment before leaving the room, searching the familiar features of his daughter for signs of the woman she was starting to be. It was like when he’d been a teenager and Debbie had hit puberty—every day she looked and acted a little bit different, more grown-up maybe. He just wasn’t prepared for the same thing to happen to his own baby girl. 

The downstairs floor was quiet except for the low hum of the TV (being watched by the small dogpile of teenagers on the living room couch) and a clattering in the kitchen that Ian followed until he found Mickey cramming trash into a plastic garbage bag to take outside. (Ian spared a moment to be grateful. The kitchen was starting to smell funny from the trash they’d left lying around.) The shorter man glanced over when Ian approached. “Hey,” he greeted.

“Hey,” Ian said in response, handing him a grease-stained paper plate from on top of the counter. When Mickey didn’t say anything else, Ian continued quietly, “Looks like you had everything covered, with the whole Mae thing.”

Mickey huffed a little, noncommittally. “Yeah, whatever, fuckhead.”

“No, seriously.” Ian caught Mickey’s arm as he circled past again on his way to the kitchen table. “How’d you know to do all that stuff for Mae? You google it or something, when she told you?”

“Naw. man,” Mickey said, shrugging to dislodge Ian’s grip but not seeming particularly upset when it didn’t work. “We’ve both got sisters, right? You know what to do when that shit happens. Gave her that old heating pad thing from the time you pulled that muscle at the club like ten years ago.”

Ian grimaced. “Fuck, I forgot about that.” He’d been in a manic phase at the time, and it led to some over-vigorous dance moves. He’d woken up the next morning hobbling like an old man. It’d been annoying for Mickey, too, who knew firsthand by now how tough it could be to keep a manic person still long enough to rest an injury.

Mickey mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like “stupid fuckin’ idiot,” but there was a hint of a grin on his face and a lack of heat to the words. Ian held onto him for one more moment, staring until Mickey looked into his eyes. “Hey. It’s gonna be OK, right? She’s just becoming a woman.”

Mickey gave him a disbelieving look. “In what universe is that okay with you?” He had a point, and Ian’s expression confirmed it. Mickey raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Ian watched him as he shoved more crap into the plastic bag. “She’s growing up,” he pointed out. “We can’t protect her forever.”

Mickey was silent for a moment as he combed through the scattered pile of mail on the table, searching for junk to add to the trash. “Yeah we fucking can,” he said vehemently, once he had finished. “Just not from this.”

Ian exhaled slowly, bowled over suddenly by his love for this man, and suddenly remembering all the times Mickey had vowed to protect _him_ , to be by his side when everyone else just screwed him over. He came to stand by Mickey once again, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and dropping a kiss to his temple when Mickey didn’t make a move to get away. “Love you,” he said into the man’s skin before letting him go.

Mickey pulled the strings of the trash bag closed with a decisive motion before raising his eyes to Ian. “Yeah, man. You too.” Then he moved away, to the door to throw the trash in the bins outside, leaving Ian to stand in the kitchen and soak in the life around them-- what was changing and what was staying the same, and how perfect and strange it all was.


End file.
